In the past, I’ve written about talent agents in many different capacities including music and video games. Some music industry pundits would say that the most promising position to have in the upcoming years is on the “agent” side, and for the competitive video game space, major talent houses such as CAA & UTA are creating divisions to rep extremely talented gamers.
Steve Rubel blogs about three Internet Careers that Won’t Soon Exist and one of his three are digital talent agents. Excerpted below:
Digital Talent Agents
During the AdAge Digital Conference last week, a Digital Agent with a major talent agency talked about how they have a group of people who crawl the web in search of undiscovered musicians, artists, etc. These agents then pair promising amateurs with Hollywood or branded entertainment projects. I last wrote about this three years ago. Then it was emerging business. Now, however, it is becoming the norm.
Rubel further makes the point that the digital talent agent will not exist in the future because there really is no difference between a digital agent and traditional (offline) agent. Digital/traditional lines are blurring and there should be no seperation. He raises an extremely good point here.
For the foreseeable future, digital talent agents aren’t going anywhere, IMHO. There are too many people at the top of the pyramid that still do not understand the digital space and will want dedicated teams to oversee it. Not everyone loves integration…. just look at the advertising world.
I sat through presentation recently by John Battelle as he spoke on behalf of Federated Media (his company). After listening to him speak about the position of his company, I can see them as the next UTA or CAA… he’s got many of the top celebs of the digital world under representation agreements. I’m not sure what his contracts state, but he’s able to help generate revenue on their behalf through integrated marketing opportunities. I’d like to see him go beyond (or maybe it’s already done) the traditional marketing arrangements and do a “management” division and really step on the toes of the big guys.
The talent agency world is fascinating…
Darren Herman is a digital media enthusiast and serial entrepreneur. Herman writes about technology, entrepreneurship and digital media at his blog, http://www.darrenherman.com.
译文:
数码世界里的经纪公司
过去我曾写过一些关于不同行业里经纪公司的文章包括音乐和电子游戏领域.一些音乐界专家很有可能会认为在近几年里经纪公司也许会是最有前景的职业,对于竞争激烈的电子游戏机领域,主要的经纪公司,如美国创新艺人经纪公司和联合人才经纪公司为了能够更好地代表最具智慧游戏商这个身份,他们打造了许多部门.
史蒂夫·鲁贝尔博客中曾谈到三个与因特网有关的职业还不会马上就出现,其中数字经纪公司就是这三个中的一个.摘要如下:
数字经纪公司
在上个星期举办的广告时代数字大会期间,一家数码公司和一家知名经纪公司谈论如果拥有一个特殊的团队会如何,这个团队成员可以潜伏于网上,寻觅一些还未被挖掘的歌星或者艺术家,然后公司可以让一些具有潜质的业余者与好赖坞合作,或者参与一些知名娱乐活动,我最后一次写这些是在三年前.当时他们所说的团队还只是个新兴行业,然而现在它们却随处可见.
鲁贝进一步发表观点,表示数字经纪公司将来会不复存在,因为数码公司和传统公司实际上不存在本质差别.传统与数字世界其实没有明显界线之分,他们也不应该被分开.他在这里提到的观点非常有意义.
恕我直言,在未来的日子里,数字经纪公司不会走得很远.有许多在金字塔顶端的人们仍旧不理解数码世界,他们希望专注的团队们能够低下头看一看这个数码世界.但是只要看一看广告界就不难发现不是每个人都喜欢集成的.
我听完了约翰巴特勒的最近一次演讲报告,他是代表他的公司博客联盟网站发言.听到他谈到自己公司的地位后,我就把他们视作了下一个美国创新艺人经纪公司和联合人才经纪公司.在声明协议下,他已经拥有了数码世界许多的顶尖精英.我并不十分清楚这些合同里到底有哪些声明,但是他有能力通过整合营销机遇帮助他们获得收益.我希望看到他能够做一些超越传统营销所做的事情(也许已经做到了),打造一个”管理”部门并且会给这些领域的强者带去一些真正的威胁和担忧.
总之经纪这一领域确实非常吸引人……